HMC150 questions answered...

I have to disagree. Even though DVCProHD uses 4:2:2 color subsampling providing twice as much color information for each frame (compared to AVCHD) the typical color correction tasks will not benefit from this at all (unlike other kind of processing like applying diffusion and other types of filters, chroma keying etc).
Plain color correction alter the color of the pixel without taking into account its neighbours. So it's only the dynamic range (bit depth) that really matters. Both DVCProHD and AVCHD have 8bit color. 10bits would be soooo nice...
That's one of the reasons it's very important to carefully set the white balance and camera settings to get the right color out of the camera (before the color information is truncated to 8bits) instead of adjusting it in post.

Good points. I've been burned before shooting tungsten white balance outdoors and you're right: fixing it in post "just ain't the same"
 
DVCProHD uses 4:2:2 color subsampling providing twice as much color information for each frame (compared to AVCHD)

Well, it's not quite s simple... don't forget, full-raster AVCHD has less color information per pixel than DVCProHD, but it has 50% more pixels (in 1080; 33% more pixels in 720). In the simplest view, then, AVCHD 1080 has 75% of the color information of DVCProHD, and 720 has 67%.

But, depending on the scene, etc., the extra luma resolution will have a greater or lesser impact... so there may be cases in which AVCHD is better than DVCProHD for keying, though there will CERTAINLY be cases where it is not...
 
. . . It looks like Sony has stepped up with some AVCHD enhancements. I think it was just released yesterday or today. Here are some of the fixes in Sony Vegas Pro 8.0c: http://sony-529.vo.llnwd.net/dspcdn/releasenotes/vegaspro80c_readme_enu.htm

Wow, most of these changes appear to be for AVCHD and XDCAM but AVCHD seems to be the predominant fix/update. I thought I read above somewhere that because of Sony and their proprietary'ness that they wouldn't be interested in AVCHD that much. However, I just did a search on AVCHD cameras and Sony has quite a line up of AVCHD consumer cameras and more coming out this month. I didn't read a lot of the links but at least one appeared to be AVCHD to DVD? Can a DVD stream keep up with the AVCHD feed rate? Could it be that there will be AVCHD to built in HDD coming?

Thus, looks like AVCHD is here boys . . . and girls . . to stay. I'm anxious to get some meaningful quantity of AVCHD footage to see how our systems handle quantity and especially multicam. We did find a local school has one AVCHD Handycam and if we can find another then we could do at least a two camera although we'd prefer a third since this is how most of our tv shows are shot.
 
I didn't read a lot of the links but at least one appeared to be AVCHD to DVD? Can a DVD stream keep up with the AVCHD feed rate?
Yes but only to a maximum of 18mbps.

Could it be that there will be AVCHD to built in HDD coming?
I'm sure there already are some, aren't there? I haven't paid much attention to the consumer lineup but I thought there were already HDD AVC-HD cams out there.
 
By the way, I tried the toast 9 transcoding and it is totally different than the voltaic transcoding. The voltaic transcoding was very slow (as all have mentioned), the colors were more saturated and dark and there was much more noise in Barry's beach shot skies. Toast on the other hand was much faster on my g5 quad. I would say offhand that with the highest quality settings 2 hrs of footage with votaic would take in the neighborhood of 70 hrs or so to transcode while toast would take (Only!) 7hrs to transcode that material. Again this is on my g5 quad. While the colors were not as saturated on the toast transcoding they were nice and maybe more realistic looking to my eye. Does anyone have a good setting on toast 9 for transcoding 1080 24p footage?
 
I just tried Vegas 8.0c on my 32-bit Vista laptop.

It works with the clips I've got. I rendered directly from the mts files. The images produced were nice.

Previously, the test mts dll didn't handle 60p files. That appears to be fixed.

One issue I noted (and this isn't just for avchd files) is that the preview window doesn't work. I'll get more data and report back soon.
 
I just tried Vegas 8.0c on my 32-bit Vista laptop.

It works with the clips I've got. I rendered directly from the mts files. The images produced were nice.

Previously, the test mts dll didn't handle 60p files. That appears to be fixed.

One issue I noted (and this isn't just for avchd files) is that the preview window doesn't work. I'll get more data and report back soon.

That could be very exciting! Were you able to bring the Barry Green mts files directly into the Vegas timeline? And are you still using that 'beta' .dll?

I'm leery to upgrade to 8.0c (I'm using 8.0b currently) because I'm in the middle of a big project, so appreciate your input.
 
That could be very exciting! Were you able to bring the Barry Green mts files directly into the Vegas timeline? And are you still using that 'beta' .dll?

I'm leery to upgrade to 8.0c (I'm using 8.0b currently) because I'm in the middle of a big project, so appreciate your input.

I am not using the beta .dll; just the one that comes with the upgrade. I was able to drag Barry's mts files to the timeline and then preview and render.

EDIT: There is a new preview option. You need to click a button on the trimmer window to get previews to show in the preview window. :)

Looks promising, but if I were you, I'd wait until after your big project.

Kurtmo
 
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I'm sure there already are some, aren't there? I haven't paid much attention to the consumer lineup but I thought there were already HDD AVC-HD cams out there.
Yep. The Canon HG10, HG20, HG21, Sony SR11 and SR12, and more are all AVC HD models that record to HDD.
I didn't read a lot of the links but at least one appeared to be AVCHD to DVD? Can a DVD stream keep up with the AVCHD feed rate?
As a matter of fact, Canon and Sony both have models out already that record to DVD: the Canon HR10 and Sony UX series.
 
Hey Guys

Does anyone have the links handy so I can grab all of Barry's AVCHD files. I want to see how FCP handles the files on a Mac Book Pro. I have to shoot/edit in the field away from a tower so I want to check the time it takes.
 
Kurt, I grabbed all of Barry's rain footage clips, put them on the timeline, applied some Magic Bullet Looks and rendered them out. Seems to work with 8.0c OK the little I've tried. Have the HMC150 on order for use with a steadicam and think it should work well there. In July I directed a short called Everything, but the Girl that is showing Oct. 5th at the Victorian here in San Francisco. We shot that using an EX1, also a very impressive camera IMHO, but the HMC150 has good remote iris/focus options, is very light and is priced well. Should be editing footage from it quite a lot and will be trying Vegas. EBTG was edited on CS3 and that worked well for EX1 footage as I wasn't the editor, but Vegas 8.0b was easy with that too, speedier than with the AVCHD naturally.
Regards, Alan
 
Well, it's not quite s simple... don't forget, full-raster AVCHD has less color information per pixel than DVCProHD, but it has 50% more pixels (in 1080; 33% more pixels in 720). In the simplest view, then, AVCHD 1080 has 75% of the color information of DVCProHD, and 720 has 67%.

Good point! I didn't take the raster size into account...

I wonder to what extent would chroma sampling benefit from shooting 1080 with AVCHD (instead of 720). Sure, the resolution is increased (and chroma information as well), but the limited codec throughput might be a bottleneck here, particularly for fast-moving action. On the other hand when shooting for chroma keying large areas of the screen usually remain green, so the codec can perform quite well.... Can't wait to get my hands on HMC150 to make real world tests.
 
Hey Guys

Does anyone have the links handy so I can grab all of Barry's AVCHD files. I want to see how FCP handles the files on a Mac Book Pro. I have to shoot/edit in the field away from a tower so I want to check the time it takes.

You have to find them in a link in this thread
 
Hi guys,
This camera will suit my needs perfect. My question is;
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/482175-REG/Wolverine_5160_ESP_160GB_Portable_Multimedia.html
Can I use this kind of Storage devices to transfer video from the SD card (or from the camera itself)?
(It has a card slot that reads/writes data and plays MPEG4 videos. I was just thinking it would be a cool alternative to carrying lots of cards, and/or for backup purposes)
Thanks

Hmmmmm, I didn't see AVCHD anywhere in the specs or detail. Thus my guess would be NOPE.
 
For backup purposes, it'd probably work (have to try it to be sure). But as to whether it'll play the files or not, no way to know until someone tries it out.
 
Yeah, something that is capable of playing back AVC would be great for out in the field since I don't need to get a new laptop and carry it around with a whole assortment of cables and card readers etc.
 
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